notional value

“Bail-in” means that the bank’s owners - the shareholders, and creditors -  the bondholders and now even depositors, will be line to absorb losses banks will incur, before outside sources of finance may be called upon. Deposit confiscation cometh ...

As we have repeatedly pointed out, the one surest way to generate profits in these manipulated, broken markets is to take advantage of the one legacy trade that makes zero sense in a world in which the global central banks are the ultimate providers of downside risk protection: i.e., going long the most shorted names. We did just this most recently past Friday, when we listed the latest hedge fund long hotel, as well as the names most shorted by the "sophisticated" investors, saying "anyone going long these names is virtually assured to outperform the market over the next year." One day later and this "strategy" is already generating outsized alpha, with the most shorted names solidly outperforming the market. And as the case may, this latest bout of "most shorted" outperformance is set to continue for one main reason. As the CFTC reported last friday, institutional investors using Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures turned bearish this month for the first time since September 2012.

A curious finding emerged in the latest 13F by Soros Fund Management, the family office investment vehicle managing the personal wealth of George Soros. Actually, two curious findings: the first was that the disclosed Assets Under Management as of December 31, 2013 rose to a record $11.8 billion (this excludes netting and margin, and whatever one-time positions Soros may have gotten an SEC exemption to not disclose: for a recent instance of this, see Greenlight Capital's Micron fiasco, and the subsequent lawsuit of Seeking Alpha which led to the breach of David Einhorn's holdings confidentiality). The second one is that the "Soros put", a legacy hedge position that the 83-year old has been rolling over every quarter since 2010, just rose to a record $1.3 billion or the notional equivalent of some 7.09 million SPY-equivalent shares. Since this was an increase of 154% Q/Q this has some people concerned that the author of 'reflexivity' and the founder of "open societies" may be anticipating some major market downside.

When it comes to the opinions of financial pundits and "experts", most can be chucked into the garbage heap of groupthink and consensus. However, one person whose opinion stands out is Elliott Management's Paul Singer. One of the most successful hedge fund managers has consistently stood against the grain of conventional wisdom over the past three decades and been handsomely reward, which is why his opinion is certainly one worth noting. Singer, together with Martin Wolf and several other panelists will be speaking at 45 minutes past the hour on a panel discussing one of the most pressing topics nearly 6 years after the Bear Stearns collapse: "Are Markets Safer Now." Watch their thoughts on the matter in the session live below.

While the public's attention has been focused recently on revelations involving currency manipulation by all the same banks best known until recently for dispensing Bollinger when they got a Libor end of day print from their criminal cartel precisely where they wanted it (for an amusing take, read Matt Taibbi's latest), the truth is that manipulation of FX and Libor is old news. Time to move on to bigger and better markets, such as physical commodities, in this case crude, as well as Interest Rate swaps. And, best of all, the us of our favorite manipulation term of all: "banging the close."

The US is demanding a sum of $6 billion - the total loss associated with the "London Whale" debacle - in compensation for JPMorgan's mis-selling of mortgage-backed-securities. The FT reports that, unsurprisingly, the bank is resisting the payment, which would be its single biggest penalty in a catalog of expensive run-ins with US authorities and one of the largest post-crisis settlements by any bank. The FHFA said the bank falsely claimed that loans backing $33bn of mortgage-backed securities complied with underwriting guidelines and that it "significantly overstated the ability of the borrowers to repay their mortgage loans". It seems, perhaps, it is time to trade in the old jewelry for some new Kremlin cufflinks (the enemy of your enemy is your friend?)

The Financial Times has revealed that Italy is facing losses of €8 billion due to derivative contracts that were taken out in the 1990s and that were restructured during the Eurozone crisis.

It was roughly four years ago when details surrounding such Goldman SPV deals as Titlos first emerged, that it became clear how for over a decade, using deliberately masking transactions such as currency swaps, Greece had managed to fool the Eurozone into believing its economy was doing far better, and its debt load was far lower than it actually was in order to comply with the Masstricht treaty's entrance requirements. As for the Pandora's Box that was opened following the disclosure of just how ugly the unvarnished truth in Europe is, following the Greek disclosure, leading to the general realization that the European experiment has failed and it is now only a matter of time before its final unwind, any comment here is unnecessary - ths has been widely discussed here and elsewhere over the past several years. Now it is Italy's turn. Overnight, the FT reported that "Italy risks potential losses of billions of euros on derivatives contracts it restructured at the height of the eurozone crisis."

A month ago, when stock markets around the globe were hitting all time highs, we wrote "The Bronze Swan Arrives: Is The End Of Copper Financing China's "Lehman Event"?" which as so often happens, many read, but few appreciated for what it truly was - the end of a major shadow leverage conduit (one involving unlimited rehypothecation at that),and the collapse of a core source of shadow liquidity. One month later, China's "Lehman event" is on the verge of appearing, and with Overnight repo rates hitting 25% last night, coupled with rumors of bank bailouts rampant, it very well already may have but don't expect the secretive Chinese politburo and PBOC to disclose it any time soon. So now that the market has finally once again caught up with reality, for the benefit of all those who missed it the first time, here is, once again, a look at the arrival of China's Bronze Swan.

It is difficult enough, in our world, to ferret out the truth and then make rational decisions based upon what you have found. Europe is a good example of this as liabilities are not acknowledged or counted while the propaganda machines roll out the officially mandated numbers. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to get at some of the truth though and liabilities, counted or not, still have to be paid. In the case of Europe a great deal of enlightenment may be found in the data available from the Bank for International Settlements and that has been my primary source for arriving at some reality. Every Chinese joke starts in the same way. "First you look over your shoulder." In the case of China, and trying to find some glimmer of truth there, the situation is far more difficult.

Fractional reserve banking is unlike most other businesses. It's not just because its product is money. It's because banks can manufacture their product out of thin air. Under the bygone rules of free market capitalism, only one thing kept banks from creating an infinite amount of money, and that was fear of failure. Periodic bank failures remind depositors of the connection between risk and reward. What is not widely appreciated is that the ensuing government bailouts allowed an underlying shadow banking system to not only survive but grow even larger. To the frustration of Keynesians, and despite an unprecedented Quantitative Easing (QE) by the Federal Reserve, conventional commercial banks have broken with custom and have amassed almost $2 trillion in excess reserves they are reluctant to lend as they scramble to digest all the bad loans still on their books. So most of the money manufactured today is actually being created by the shadow banks. But shadow banks do not generally make commercial loans. Rather, they use the money they manufacture to fund proprietary trading operations in repos and derivatives. No one knows when the bubble will pop, but when it does a donnybrook is going to break out over that thin wedge of collateral whose ownership is spread across counterparties around the world, each looking for relief from their own judges, politicians, bureaucrats, and taxpayers.

What is going to happen when the greatest economic bubble in the history of the world pops?  The mainstream media never talks about that.  They are much too busy covering the latest dogfights in Washington and what Justin Bieber has been up to.  And most Americans seem to think that if the Dow keeps setting new all-time highs that everything must be okay.  Sadly, that is not the case at all. Right now, the U.S. economy is exhibiting all of the classic symptoms of a bubble economy. What we are witnessing right now is the calm before the storm.  Let us hope that it lasts for as long as possible so that we can have more time to prepare. Unfortunately, this bubble of false hope will not last forever.  At some point it will end, and then the pain will begin.

In all the hoopla over Japan's stock market crash and China's PMI miss last night, the biggest news of the day was largely ignored: copper, and the fact that copper's ubiquitous arbitrage and rehypothecation role in China's economy through the use of Chinese Copper Financing Deals (CCFD) is coming to an end.

260,000 S&P 500 e-mini contracts traded in the three minutes following the fake AP Tweet. That is ~$20.4 Billion notional value 'changed hands'. For those with trailing stops, our condolences...

The story of ex-Goldman's prop-trader Matt Taylor is well known: in November of last year, he was accused by the CFTC of concealing a massive, market-moving $8.3 billion ES position, and was charged by the CFTC, who sought a whopping $130,000 in penalties for what was obviously an attempt to move the market using size and scale (a la Bruno Iksil) on December 13 and 14, 2007. Taylor, who left Goldman in 2008 because apparently his attempt had been discovered amid allegations of "conduct related to inappropriately large proprietary futures positions in a firm trading account" and ended up working as Co-Head Single Stock Derivatives at Morgan Stanley until July 2012, prudently denied all accusations. However, roughly an hour ago, news broke that he had finally turned himself in to the Feds and is now expected to plead guilty to what for now are still unclear criminal charges.